‘Tú’ (you) is used to address people you know very well (good friends, relatives, children…)
‘Usted’ (you) is used to address people you meet for the first time or are not very familiar with.
‘Ustedes’ is the plural form of both ‘Tú’ and ‘Usted’.

This is the way it works in Latin America. In Spain, the rules are a bit different. Since this course focuses on Latin American Spanish, we won’t confuse you with too much extra material.

Now let’s try a few example sentences with the subject pronouns above. We will be introducing you to the verb ‘hablar’ which means ‘to speak’. We will go into a lot more detail about verbs later but for now, the only thing you need to know is that verbs in Spanish change a lot more with the subject pronoun than they do in English.